Why Israel is a hotbed for flash storage innovation

Israel has long been a nation that draws in big corporate R&D facilities and acquisitions

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By Lucas Mearian, Computerworld
May 17, 2012 08:50 AM ET

At the same time EMC was in Israel trying to strike a deal to buy XtremeIO, NetApp and Dell were also there vying for the flash storage array maker’s intellectual property.

EMC’s acquisition of the NAND flash storage company followed a similar move by Apple when it purchased Israeli-based flash drive maker Anobit in January.

"Particularly in flash memory they have really good talent over there," said Ryan Chien, an analyst with market research firm IHS iSuppli.

Flash storage is at the forefront of technology powering current industry trends such as cloud services, virtualization and online transaction processing. Because of that, flash development is a red-hot industry, analysts said. That fact has not been lost on Israel.

Israel has long been a nation that draws in big corporate R&D facilities and acquisitions. Microsoft and Cisco both built their first non-U.S. R&D facilities there, for instance. Google has two R&D centers in Israel now; Intel has four. Intel also has two manufacturing facilities

In 2010-2011, Israel was ranked No. 1 in the world in terms of the quality of its scientific research institutions by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum. It also ranked seventh in its capacity for innovation.

EMC itself has about 800 employees in Israel, part of an R&D center that includes VMware development. In 2010, Micron also purchased Numonyx, which operates a flash fabrication in Israel.

R&D centers in Israel (Source: State of Israel Ministry of Industry, Trade & Labor)

In flash, software rules

When it comes to engineering NAND flash storage products, writing code to manage how the non-volatile memory is used is key, especially as the size of flash chips continues to shrink. (Smaller chips increase the likelihood of increased data errors as electrons leak through thinner and thinner silicon cell walls.) Controlling how data is laid out on flash chips also results in longer product life.

On top of managing the NAND flash itself, solid-state drive (SSD) systems need software that enables optimum performance in conjunction with I/O hungry applications and hard disk drives. For example, tiering technology migrates data from low-end disks to high-end disks to flash drives.

Israel has long been home to flash storage development. For example, USB flash drives were invented by the Israeli company M-Systems in partnership with IBM. M-Systems was bought out by flash drive maker SanDisk in 2006.

"EMC is looking at the NAND resources in Israel, scientists who can handle all the issues with lower-lithography NAND," Chien said.

In 2010, EMC hired Orna Berry — formerly the chief scientist of Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade, and Labor — to be the general manager of its Center of Excellence (COE) facility in Beersheba, directly adjacent to Ben-Gurion University. The COE is responsible for R&D in areas such as security, high availability systems and flash memory and runs EMC’s anti-fraud service for the company’s worldwide user base.

The Israeli difference

Because of Israel’s diminutive size and its location, technological innovation is more a matter of "life and death," Berry said. "Many of the technologies, if we don’t invent them, we also [could not] buy them. It’s a political issue. Consequently, we often need to be self-sufficient in certain technologies. On the other hand, being first to market often gives us an opportunity to have a place in the market."

Israel’s military-industrial complex is also tightly intertwined with academia, helping to develop and promote programs that foster technology innovation and corporate incubation. "I would say that almost more than any other government, maybe with the exception of Finland and Singapore, Israel has been extremely focused on turning know-how into economical or defense value as a policy," Berry said.

Mark Peters, an analyst with market research firm ESG, agreed. What Israel has to offer is a large population of students steeped in mathematics and science. The country has no natural resources to speak of and doesn’t export any significant retail items, Peters said.

"When was the last time you saw a tag that said ‘Made in Israel?’" Peters said. "For Israel, education is all about sophisticated science and math. As a country, they’re not focused on low-margin products. They’re always at the advanced level."

Israel’s top schools, such as Tel Aviv University and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, are bastions of high-tech education.

Additionally, Peters noted that an unusually high number of well-educated Russians have immigrated to Israel since the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Peters also pointed to high military R&D spending, and a strong venture capitalist community for the nation’s tech success.

Big companies on the prowl

Every large technology company – from IBM to Hewlett-Packard – is considering acquiring a full range of solid-state products, from drives to arrays, Peters said. If they don’t, they’ll be left behind.

"They’ve got to be shopping around everything," he said. "Management, ultimately, for solid-state technology has got to be up and down the entire stack," he said.

For example, last year flash drive maker SanDisk purchased Pliant Technologies for its enterprise-class flash drives. It then turned around and purchased flash management software vendor FlashSoft this past February.

EMC’s acquisition roadmap to date has included nine Israeli-based companies, including Kashya, nLayers and Proactivity. But XtremIO is its largest acquisition by far, with EMC reportedly spending $430 million on a company that has yet to ship its first product.

While the XtremIO buyout raised the eyebrows of some industry pundits who doubted the wisdom of the deal, according to Peters and Kobi Rozengarten, a managing partner at Jerusalem Venture Partners (JVP). JVP is one of several major investors in XtremIO, which garnered $25 million in venture funding since its founding in 2009.

Peters and Rozengarten said EMC wanted superior "architectural" software — and got it.

"Today’s flash is a very unreliable device with poor retention and endurance (especially when scaling to 20 nanometers and bellow)," Rozengarten said. "This requires a sophisticated ECC based on [a digital signal processor] and new flash controller know-how. In this space, Israeli’s companies are leading with companies such as Anobit and Densbits."

In fact, Israel has been a hub for many leading companies and technologies including semiconductors, communications, security and storage, Rozengarten said.

As a result, it has become a nation of high-profile startups that don’t last long before they’re scooped up by big international players, Peters said.

Outside Israel, the flash storage market is flush with vendors for the picking, from all-flash array makers such as Nimbus, Violin Memory, Texas Memory Systems, Pure Storage, and Whiptail to PCIe flash card vendors such as Fusion-io, Intel, Micron and Virident. There are also all-flash appliance makers such as SolidFire and Tintri. Of the latter companies, Violin is the least likely to be acquired as it has its sights on going public.

Flash arrays: the next battle ground

Chien expects flash array products to be the next battle ground among vendors. The industry will consolidate quickly over the next several years, he said, as big storage vendors such as Dell, NetApp and HP rush to scoop up flash technology in much the same way they did data deduplication companies a few years ago.

That, no doubt, played into EMC’s decision to snap up XtremIO.

One reason for the battle is that flash storage’s ultra-high performance characteristics address specific applications that are on the leading edge of corporate IT projects — namely cloud, virtualization and web-based services.

For example, cloud service providers want arrays that have the ability to offer multi-tenancy, or many users on a single server or array, but without hitting I/O performance. Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDIs) place a heavy I/O burden on servers when large corporate deployments boot up in the morning and shut down and refresh at night.

Although Dell declined to comment on whether it’s in the hunt for flash storage vendors, a NetApp spokesperson said by e-mail that the company is "always on the lookout for opportunities to acquire technology and businesses that complement and enhance our product and solution portfolio.

"We cannot disclose details around our interest in a specific space or target," the spokesperson said. "NetApp remains interested in pursuing corporate development opportunities that help us to gain share, whether it be through acquisitions, strategic partnerships, and/or reseller agreements."

When it came to an XtremIO deal, both NetApp and Dell were at a disadvantage. EMC had been an investor in the company from the beginning, according to at least two sources.

More importantly, EMC was not looking for just another flash hardware product, Peters said. It wanted XtremIO’s flash management intellectual property — the software.

In remarks after the purchase, EMC spokesman Dave Farmer did not refer to XtremIO’s product as a flash array but as "an architecture."

"EMC, whatever else you may think of them, doesn’t do a lot of stupid things," Peters said. "For the next few years, the industry will be focused on storage management and not flash technology."

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas’s RSS feed. His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

All contents copyright 1995-2012 Network World, Inc. http://www.networkworld.com

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Covering global economic issues with a focus on Brazil

Investing

May 4, 2012, Forbes

What is Google Up To in Israel ?

I visited Google’s office in Tel Aviv where about 50 people work in Marketing & Sales and over 200 in the engineers department. Yes, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google founders, are Jewish. However,  this post has no religious orientation. If you are looking for some sort of religious conspiracy theory go elsewhere, here you will learn only about what Google is really up to in Israel.

Google office in downtown Tel Aviv

Google first opened its office in Israel in 2006. I visited two of the four floors used by Google on the 21^st and 22^nd floors of the famous Levinstein Tower in downtown Tel Aviv. Although not as impressive as the famed Googleplex in Mountain View, California, the offices offer magnificent views of the Mediterranean sea. Each room has its own theme, with walls and furnishings of all colors. There is a meeting room filled with giant legos, a pinball machine, Nintendo Wii, Playstation and other games. There is also a fully equipped music room with guitars, drums, microphones, professional sound system, etc. Add to that a silent room, a 3D printer, and free food at each floor. The feeling of being in a kindergarten almost made me forget that I was in one of the world’s largest multinational companies.

Google also employs about 80 engineers in its second office in Israel located in Haifa, Israel’s technological center. The Haifa office is just 2 thousand meters away from the beach; I saw pictures but I did not visit that office. The second office also has toys in the lobby, game rooms, beanbag chairs, free food, and so on. Some affirm these Google methods do not enhance creativity. Personally, I believe that, at least, it incentives employees to spend more time together and create stronger personal bonds, which will pay off later by increasing team work.  Here is a video about work-life balance at Google Israel.

After visiting the premises, Inna Weiner, a software engineer, presented products and services that have started and/or  are being developed in Israel:

Live Results is being developed in Israel. It allows people to find data they are looking for directly in the Google webpage, without the need to click on a link that will direct visitors to a website. For instance, you search “Weather in Rio de Janeiro” and it directly shows the forecast instead of only links to websites (in case you are curious, it is 25 degrees Celsius in the Beautiful city today). I believe Live Results is an effort to make users spend more time in the Google page. By the way,  in April, it was the first time people spent more time on Facebook than on Google in Brazil.

Person finder application. An app that was very useful during the Turkey Earthquake. Whenever a natural disaster takes place, the person finder application goes live, aiming to provide reliable and actual information about missing people. People basically have two buttons, “I am looking for someone” and “I have info about someone.”. I enjoy this kind of innovation; it makes me think of Chief Almir using Google Earth to fight deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. The person finder application was developed as part of the 20% of free time that engineers have at Google to work on any project of their choice, as long as that project has been approved by their superior. Bear in mind that whatever is developed during these 20% of “free time” is owned by Google, not by the employees. By the way, people in the Sales & Mktg department don’t have the 20% of free time privilege. However, in the Tel Aviv office they can still use the 3D printer and eat for free all day long.

Google Suggest – The Autocomplete Search Tool that let us “search faster than the speed of typing” was fully developed in Israel. Personally, I find this tool way too intrusive. I don’t like to have the impression that I am so dumb that an algorithm can predict what I am about to search for. I am afraid that tomorrow a machine will know what I am about to think.

Digital Dead Sea Scrolls Project. Google has digitized one of the oldest manuscript ever discovered and allows everyone to examine it online with high resolution. For instance, if you search for “And the world shall dwell with the lamb,” you can instantly find the exact location in the digital version of the original scroll. This project was such a success that in the first day it was live more people saw the dead sea scrolls than in the entire year before.

Inna was very excited to present the work Google has done with the Yad Vashem memorial, dedicated to victims of the Holocaust. This collaboration has created an online collaborative archive of photographs of the museum. Basically, Google uploaded thons of physical documents, such as photos. Anyone, anywhere can not only find information about each person and/or location in the pictures but also easily add information.

Google Insights for search started in Israel and now is being improved by Google engineers all over the world. It is a free tool to analyze search queries. However, only ratios and not the total number of queries are revealed. For instance, you can verify that the total amount of searches for the term “Pele” was about three times higher than ”Maradona” in the past 30 days.

In-Page Analytics was fully developed in Israel. Basically, it lets you quantify precise information about your website. For instance, you can measure the percentage of visitors who clicked on any clickable item in your website.
Receive emails through SMS in Ghana. Google Israel developed an app that allows people to receive emails in SMS format. In Ghana, just like in Guinea Conakry where I worked, broadband internet is not widespread. However, most people have cell phones. When you send an email to someone registered in this service, the person receives the email as a SMS. I hope Google has found a better way of filtering spams than in regular Gmail.

Interactive videos in youtube started in Israel and was taken to Mountain View to be fully developed.

“Got the wrong Bob” for Gmail, Priority inbox for Gmail, Hot topics and hot searches, all started in the Israel office.

Jonathan Riftin, Industry Analyst based in Tel Aviv, explained the Structure of the Marketing & Sales team in Israel:

In Tel Aviv, the Marketing & Sales team only supports big clients. Small and medium businesses are handled by the Mktg & Sales office in Dublin. The Mktg & Sales team is divided in small groups. Each group contains a client manager, account strategists and industry analysts. Client managers are responsible for meeting and handling large accounts, which can be the government, big Israeli companies, universities, and so on. Industry Analysts main tasks are to follow trends and complete market research. For instance, if an airline company wants to open a direct flight from Tel Aviv to Sao Paulo, the industry analyst will measure the amount of queries relating Israel and Brazil and come up with an estimated price of the related sponsored search terms. The estimative is then validated by the client manager who will present it to the prospective client. Account strategists are responsible for building and assisting online campaigns. If an agency builds the online campaign for a client, the account strategist will monitor it and suggest ways to improve the campaign, always focusing on maximizing ROI.

I have also visited Google’s office in the center of Paris. To my surprise, I found out that the Sales & marketing teams are designed in very similar manners worldwide. When Jonathan Riftin, Industry Analyst based in Tel Aviv, explained what the Sales & Marketing team does in Israel, it was like replaying the speech I heard a month ago from Christian Vigne, account strategist at Google Paris, explaining what he does in France.

When asked about the main differences between the Tel Aviv office and the Paris office or any other Google office worldwide regarding the Sales & Marketing teams, the answer was, “Besides cultural differences, the view in the office!” They quickly added that the special ingredient and main reason why Google has such an important R&D center in Israel is because of the quality of Israeli engineers.

Claude Lanzmann and Israel

Posted by Richard Brody, March 20, 2012  The New Yorker

Israel is central to the life and the work of Claude Lanzmann, and he says as much in his autobiography, “The Patagonian Hare.” His 1952 visit there prompted him to revise his view of “Anti-Semite and Jew,” a book by his elder associate (and, later, friend) Jean-Paul Sartre, which argued that Jewish identity is inseparable from the anti-Semite’s conception of Jews. Sartre encouraged him to write his own book on the subject, and though the hundred pages that Lanzmann wrote were never published (and were subsequently lost), Lanzmann considers that their ideas were filtered into his first film, “Israel, Why” (released in 1973). Israel is the subject of his third film, “Tsahal,” from 1994, in which he considers Israel’s army—its means, its deeds, its ethos. In 1962, Lanzmann was motivated by the newly independent Algeria’s hostility toward Israel to reconsider the politics of the anticolonialist left and to rededicate attention to Israel.

And “Shoah” itself is inextricable from Israel—because the film arose from the commission of an Israeli official, because some of its participants lived there, and because some of the film’s most extraordinary scenes (such as the discussion with Abraham Bomba in a barbershop, and the discussion with Itzhak Zuckermann, called Antek, in a kibbutz) were filmed there, but also because the Holocaust itself is inseparable from Israel—not only because the establishment of the modern state of Israel occurred in part in response to the Holocaust, but because Israel stands as a bitter counterfactual to the Holocaust. Had there been a state of Israel, many of the Holocaust’s victims would likely have escaped to safety there—and that state would have spoken for them, even fought for them militarily at a time when the nations of the world did not.

Lanzmann considers Israel from the perspective of what he calls the “reappropriation of violence by the Jews.” He writes in his autobiography that he made “Tsahal” in the belief “that the young soldiers in this young army, the sons and grandsons of Filip Müller”—a survivor of Auschwitz who testifies extensively in the film—“and his companions in catastrophe, are, deep down, the same men their fathers were.” One thing that’s too rarely mentioned regarding “Shoah” is that it isn’t just the story of victimhood, of victims and executioners and indifferent bystanders. It’s also the story of resistance, in all of its forms.

For Lanzmann, survival and the bearing of witness is itself a crucial form of resistance. But the film also presents testimony about plans of prisoners to rise up, violently, against their captors in Auschwitz and Treblinka; about escape; and, ultimately, in the terrible yet unbearably great ending, about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, as described by Simcha Rotem, one of its survivors, who speaks of emerging from his hiding place in the sewers into the desolation of the empty ghetto after the failed uprising and assuming that he was “the last Jew.”

What does it mean to resist? One of the notable achievements of the film is to refute Hannah Arendt’s charge that Jews involved with the administration of the ghettos or who worked at the extermination camps were inherently willing collaborators with the Germans. One of the key characters in the film, Adam Czerniakow, wasn’t there to testify in person—he was the leader of the Jewish community in the Warsaw ghetto, and kept a diary before he killed himself there; the historian Raul Hilberg, who speaks with Lanzmann in “Shoah,” describes some of Czerniakow’s sharply perceptive, harshly factual entries. And Lanzmann’s 2001 film “Sobibor, 14 October 1943, 4 P.M.” is mainly an interview (one that was done for “Shoah”) with Yehuda Lerner, who took part in a successful uprising against the camp guards.

The terrible paradox at the core of Lanzmann’s work is that the two films about Israel—“Israel, Why” and “Tsahal”–that he made before and after “Shoah” are much less accomplished works of art. The earlier film, a very good documentary that presents an interestingly diverse array of Israeli voices, doesn’t have a significant component of form or style, and, though many of its discussions concern the issue that is of crucial importance to the filmmaker, “Who is a Jew?,” the movie doesn’t offer any distinctive answers to that question. As for “Tsahal,” it gives an answer that locks the movie in place for the entirety of its five-hour running time. It’s a movie that’s constrained by its guiding idea: the importance of the fact that there is an Israeli army, and the impossibility of accepting the existence of Israel without embracing its military force as a bastion against the constant threat of destruction, of imminent catastrophe. The unfolding, through interviews, of the Yom Kippur War of 1973 makes for an imposing work of history on its own, but the movie is less an investigation and a discovery than an illustration.

Lanzmann writes that he would never have made these films had he lived in Israel:

Just as I could never have devoted twelve years of my life to a work such as “Shoah” if I had been sent to the camps. These things are mysterious, or perhaps they are not. There can be no true creation without opacity, the creator does not have to be transparent to himself. One thing is certain, the role of the witness … required me to be both within and without, as though I had been assigned a precise position.

But Lanzmann really was just a visitor to Israel; he was, in a crucial way, a survivor of the Holocaust, inasmuch as he lived in France under German occupation and lived in constant fear of arrest and deportation as a Jew. His entire adult life was haunted by the extermination of Europe’s Jews; in his films about Israel, he never offers a satisfactory answer to the question of who is a Jew, but in “Shoah” he comes closer, by way of Sartre’s negative hypothesis. That’s not Lanzmann’s fault. It’s the fault of history, of the black hole of destruction that the Holocaust has placed in Europe and in Judaism itself, an event of quasi-Biblical incommensurability that hasn’t yet found its mythopoetic representation—and that may never have one. But “Shoah” is the closest thing to it.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/03/claude-lanzmann-and-israel.html?printable=true&currentPage=all#ixzz1phinpKPI

Hugh Hart, San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday, March 18, 2012

‘Footnote,’ surprise hit in Israel, pits father against son for exalted prize

"Footnote," Joseph Cedar‘s Oscar-nominated movie about dueling Talmudic scholars, is still running in Israel after 40 weeks, much to the filmmaker’s surprise.

"Nobody thought it would do that well, but apparently there’s a whole demographic that wants to see a movie about philologists," Cedar says, laughing. "I was really hoping it would capture the attention of more than people who are part of that world, because that would have limited my audience to not more than about 25 people."

"Footnote" pits a meticulous historian (Shlomo Bar-Aba) against his son (Lior Ashkenazi) when a committee announces the wrong man as winner of the prestigious Israel Prize.

Cedar, whose father is a prominent scientist, got the idea for "Footnote" when he received a phone call informing him that he’d be receiving a major award from the Italian government.

"I was positive that she must have meant to call my father and suggested that possibility," he says. "She told me to wait on the line. While I was waiting, I thought, this would make an interesting scenario for a film."

Though he rarely speaks in "Footnote," veteran character actor Aba successfully communicates the bitterness of a man who feels his achievements have been unjustly ignored. Cedar says, "We found a way to fuel his face with rage. It has to do with despising people because he sees them living their lives in error. Once Shlomo understood how much anger there was in that character, it turned out that there was a lot to work with."

Surprising quality for disposable fest

The Disposable Film Festival kicks off its fifth year Thursday at the Castro Theatre with a "Shorts Night" program featuring movies shot on smart phones, webcams and other nonprofessional devices. The four-day festival also includes a workshop led by iPhone animator Sascha Ciezata.

"The number and quality of entries this year surpassed anything we’ve seen before, festival director Carlton Evans says.

Brothers recapture landscape of their youth

Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne discovered a riveting talent when they cast 13-year old Thomas Doret as the title character in "The Kid With a Bike."

Winner of the Cannes Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, "Kid" follows an antisocial boy who flails for direction after being abandoned by his father.

Doret won the part on audition day when the filmmakers asked him to do a scene involving a phone call to his elusive dad. Luc says, "There was something in Thomas’ gaze, his hands, arms, shoulders, his intensity and extraordinary concentration. And he has a mouth with naturally slightly down-turned corners, giving it a tinge of sadness which disappears when he smiles. Doret got across this sense of lacking, of missing something. We were convinced that the father was going to pick up!"

"The Kid With a Bike" features an unusually lush color palette designed to feed the film’s dramatic conflicts. "During postproduction, we tried to make the light as warm as possible while making the kid’s face cooler," Jean Pierre explains. "Also, we made a deliberate choice to clothe the boy in red because this color made his gaze more intense. We felt that this little person in red underscored the image of a character from a fairy tale. The more we rehearsed, the more we felt our story was a fairy tale."

The brothers, who based their piece on the real-life story of a Japanese boy who became a gang member after losing contact with his father, shot "The Kid With a Bike " in their hometown of Seraing.

Luc says, "Growing up, we got our first taste of freedom in Seraing, and it’s where we started to break rules for the first time. We left, and we came back as adults to find a town that had suffered terribly from the economic downturn. We saw a breakdown of family structure and a lot of lost youths. This is the landscape from our childhood, the landscape which is still there in our adulthood and which we have tried to tame." {sbox}

Hugh Hart is a San Francisco Chronicle correspondent. sadolphson@sfchronicle.com

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/03/18/PKR61NHJ1C.DTL

This article appeared on page P – 23 of the San Francisco Chronicle

© 2012 Hearst Communications Inc. |

Sony unveils its first smartphone, to arrive in Israel next month. “Israel is the second biggest market in terms of smartphones.”

Elad Benari & Yoni Kempinski, Arutz Sheva, March 15, 2012

Sony Mobile’s first smartphone, the Xperia S, will arrive in Israel in April, and it was officially presented at a special news conference on Wednesday. Arutz Sheva was there.

Sony’s products are popular in Israel and, during 2012, Sony Mobile plans to open four new concept stores across the country, which will be joining an existing store at the Ayalon Mall in Ramat Gan.

The new stores will offer smartphones, but also a large variety of unique accessories.

[youtube:126225]

Antony Barounas, a Vice President at Sony Mobile’s customer unit, told Arutz Sheva that in terms of technology, Israel is the “best of the best.”

“The Israeli market for us at Sony is the second biggest market in terms of smartphones, on a worldwide basis,” said Barounas. “First is Singapore, second is Israel.”

The reason Israel ranking so high, he explained, is that Israelis always want the best and want it earlier than the rest of the market.

“You have a 78 percent penetration in the smartphone business, whereas in Europe it’s only 45,” said Barounas. “These are amazing numbers, and that’s why we’re here.”

www.israelnationalnews.com

What’s new on the app stores on Monday 12 March 2012

Khan Academy’s iPad app includes more than 2,700 educational videos

A selection of 18 new apps for you today:

Khan Academy

Armed with the promise that it “allows you to learn almost anything for free”, educational site Khan Academy now has an iPad app providing access to its 2,700+ videos, covering everything from maths, biology and physics to finance and history.
iPad

Watch with eBay

This is US-only for the moment, but it’s a fascinating take on second-screen apps from eBay. The idea: find auction listings relating to whatever TV show you’re watching at the time, from branded sports apparel to DVDs and signed autographs. There’s also a feature focused on celebrities’ charity causes, spotlighting related items.
iPad

Williams F1 iPredictor

The Williams Formula 1 team has launched a new iPhone app in time for the new season, which gets fans to predict events in each race to earn points: from the top six cars to the total number of safety car appearances. Players have to log in via Facebook, with a prize of a guest slot at a Williams practice day on offer to the winner.
iPhone

Secret Agent Splat’s Mission

Harper Collins’ latest book-app brings Splat the Cat to iOS, as the feisty feline goes on a search for some missing toy ducks. That’s cue for a story, as well as three spy-themed mini-games for children to play.
iPhone / iPad

iA Writer

Marvellous minimalist word-processor app iA Writer is already available on iPad and Mac, but now the former version has been made Universal so it works on iPhone and iPod touch too. And all three sync documents using iCloud.
iPhone

Dolphin Browser

Innovative gesture-based browser Dolphin has been a big hit on Android, but now it’s available for RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook too. Tabbed browsing is blended with a system to trace symbols on the screen to access your favourite websites – a ‘G’ for Google and so on.
BlackBerry PlayBook

Cleantech Group, World Wildlife Fund release first-ever global cleantech innovation ranking. Denmark, Israel and Sweden dominate top-three slots

Reprinted from YNet News, March 1, 2012

Going green, going strong: Israel is among the top-three nations worldwide that provide the best conditions for clean technology startup companies, a recent ranking by the CleanTech Group stated. Topping the list was Denmark, followed by Israel, Sweden, Finland and the United States.

“Coming Clean: The Global Cleantech Innovation Index 2012,” is a first-of-its-kind ranking, complied by the CleanTech Group and the World Wildlife Fund. It listed the top 38 countries worldwide to offer clean energy projects the most favorable conditions.

The report explored clean energy opportunities in each of the 38 countries. The evaluation was based on a 15-indicators scale, which reviewed the creation and commercialization of cleantech start-ups according their potential in relation to their economic size, and innovation projections for the next 10 years.

In 2011, Israel was ranked the world’s fourth-leading nation in cleantech investments.

“Israel leads the pack in its capacity to produce new innovative cleantech companies per capita,” The report said.

According to the report, the two factors that kept Israel out of the top spot are its small domestic market, and “the lack of government support for cleantech development.”

“The global macro-economic landscape is shifting; fostering entrepreneurial start-ups and growth companies with clean technology solutions will be an increasingly important part of countries’ competitiveness on the world stage,” Richard Youngman, of the Cleantech Group said.

“This index shows that several countries are on the right track, but clearly much more needs to be done if we are to properly address climate change and achieve a transition towards a global 100% renewable future,” Samantha Smith of the WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative, said.

If you miss the events listed below, there will be more next month when airfares are still low.

By SHAWN RODGERS,  01/27/2012

Catch Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura with Idan Raichel at the World Music concert series.

FILM
1.THE DESCENDANTS
Native islander Matt King (George Clooney) lives with his family in Hawaii. Their world shatters when a tragic accident leaves his wife in a coma. Not only must Matt struggle with the stipulation in his wife’s will that she be allowed to die with dignity, but he also faces pressure from relatives to sell their family’s enormous land trust.
At selected cinemas throughout the country.
MUSIC
2. ANALYZING AYA
Aya Korem is considered one of the country’s most promising singer-songwriters, composing both the music and the lyrics of her songs. She continues to prove her songwriting ability with punchy songs about daily life, love and Israeli reality. Catch her as she performs her many hits, as well as songs from her latest album, Le’alef et Hasusim (Taming Horses).
Tonight, 9:30, Cafe Bialik, Tel Aviv, (03) 620-0832
Music
3. MOURA’S UNIVERSE
Appearing for the first time in Israel, Portuguese fado singer Ana Moura will be joined by Idan Raichel in opening the 2012 World Music concert series at the Israeli Opera. Moura, who is one of the most popular fadistas in Portugal, is gaining a global reputation due to her moving performances and stunning vocal talents. She has also collaborated with such artists as Prince and The Rolling Stones.
Friday, 10 p.m., Opera House, Tel Aviv, www.israel-opera.co.il
FESTIVAL
4. THE WORLD’S A STAGE
For the fifth consecutive year, the ever-new Clipa Theater presents Clipa Aduma, its cutting-edge performance art and visual theater festival that takes place over three weeks from February 2 to 22 in all three performance spaces at the Clipa Theater. Highlights include two extraordinary Butoh artists from Japan; Mestoslav, an object theater piece from Russia; and Pieces of Paradise from Brazil. The local pieces, many multimedia and multidisciplinary, include Diamedia, a TV-human love story, and Gindaor, created and performed by Born to Dance winner Arthur Astman.
For more info, visit www.aduma.co.il

THEATER
5. THE IMPORTANCE OF WILDE WIT
The Haifa English Theater presents Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. In this classic farce about mistaken identity, Jack (Rory Cunningham) and his freeloading friend Algernon (Jordan Mandell) pursue the hearts of Gwendolen (Theresa O’Toole Kipp) and Cecily (Mary Okonkwo). The disapproval of Gwendolen’s mother Lady Bracknell (Sylvia Lippa) adds to the drama as the men complicate matters by using imaginary alter egos in their attempt to woo the women.
Tonight and Saturday, 8:30 p.m., Beit Hagefen Auditorium, 33 Hatzionut St., Haifa, www.h-e-t.org
KIDS
6. SEARCHING FOR CLUES
This colorful stage version of Erich Kastner’s children’s novel Emil and the Detectives takes young audiences on a fun-filled adventure together with Emil and his friends in search of the robber who stole Emil’s money on the train. The children in the audience become the actors’ accomplices as they turn to them for advice. In Hebrew.
Saturday, 11 a.m., Holon Mediatheque, www.mediatheque.org.il
MIXED BAG
7. IT’S BURNS NIGHT
Celebrate the birthday of Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, with the best of Scottish cuisine, music, songs and whisky at the Scots Hotel in Tiberias. The evening will be hosted by Israeli actor and comedian Guri Alfi. Following a roast beef dinner with traditional haggis, there will be performances by the Bodhran Ensemble.
Tonight, Scots Hotel, 1 G’dud Barak Street, Tiberias, (04) 671-0710 or www.scotshotels.co.il
EXHIBITION
8. MIXING BUSINESS WITH PLEASURE
The Jerusalem International Convention Center is playing host to Israel’s first kosher wine exhibition. Some 30 wineries will present their products at this event. This is a great opportunity for wine enthusiasts to explore the new flavors, bouquets and colors of products introduced by the big estates, as well as the boutique wineries. A highlight is Cooking in Wine workshops conducted by chef Shaul Ben-Aderet.
Runs Monday and Tuesday, 3 p.m.-11 p.m., (02) 633-4950
EDUCATIONAL
9. CATCHING THE EARLY BIRD
The new Ramat Hanegev Birding Center is offering accommodation, bird-watching trips around the region, and other assorted ornithological activities on four weekends until the end of February. The trips take in a number of locations around the Negev, such as Sfinat Hamidbar, the Ben-Gurion Field School at Sde Boker and the region between Nitzana and Ezuz. The programs also include sunset trips through the desert, bird ringing and lectures about the species of birds that pass through the region at this time of year.
For more info visit www.weekend.co.il/negev/sfinatamidbar
UPCOMING FESTIVAL
10. BEST OF THE BRITS
A combination of classics and cuttingedge films makes up the 12th British Film Festival. Highlights include Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus (pictured) starring himself, Gerard Butler and Vanessa Redgrave, as well as Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur, which won the Directing Award and Special Jury Prize at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. This aside, the festival offers everything from documentaries and animated films to shorts from the British Isles.
The BFF takes place February 4 through 12 at cinematheques in Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland’s, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.

By Tal Barak Harif – Jan 25, 2012, Bloomberg

BioLineRx Ltd. (.BLRXARB) surged in New York trading, widening the premium versus its Tel Aviv shares to a record, on bets the biopharmaceutical company will be acquired following its licensing agreement for a hepatitis C treatment.

BioLineRx’s American depositary receipts jumped 69 percent on the Nasdaq Stock Market yesterday, swelling the premium to the Israeli stock to 28 percent. The Tel Aviv shares soared 25 percent at 10:28 a.m. in Tel Aviv today. The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index (ISRA25BN) of the largest Israeli companies traded in New York rose 0.1 percent to 92.53. Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP) led gains after Topeka Capital Markets Inc. recommended buying shares of the maker of network security equipment.

BioLineRx’s agreement with French company Genoscience to develop and sell a hepatitis C pill treatment boosts the odds that the Jerusalem-based company will be bought, according to Morgan Joseph TriArtisan Group. Bristol-Myers (BMY) Squibb Co. and Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD) announced $13.3 billion of acquisitions in the past two months to buy developers of hepatitis treatments.

“The fact that BioLineRx now has a highly novel hepatitis C drug in its armory should make the company an appealing target for strategic partners,” Raghuram Selvaraju, a New York-based equity analyst at Morgan Joseph TriArtisan, said by e-mail yesterday. “The hepatitis C viral infection space is an area that has been particularly hot recently.”

The Bloomberg Israel-US 25 Index has gained 10 percent this year, outperforming the Nasdaq Composite Index’s (CCMP) 7 percent advance and the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index’s 4.5 percent increase. A 14 percent jump in Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (TEVA), the world’s largest maker of generic drugs, has helped pushed the Israel-US 25 higher. The TA-25 stock index rose 0.3 percent to 1,126.06 today.

BioLineRx ‘Euphoria’

Bristol-Myers, a biopharmaceutical company based in New York, said on Jan. 7 it would pay about $2.5 billion in cash to buy Inhibitex Inc. (INHX), which is developing an oral drug called INX-189 for treating hepatitis C. Pharmasset Inc. (VRUS), based in Princeton, New Jersey, agreed to be acquired by Gilead Sciences for $10.8 billion in a deal announced on Nov. 21.

Gilead, the world’s largest maker of HIV drugs, offered the highest premium on record for a drug takeover of comparable size, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

As many as 170 million people worldwide carry the hepatitis C virus, a blood-borne disease that can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The market for medicines to treat the disease is about $3 billion worldwide, said Andrew Berens, a senior health-care analyst with Bloomberg Industries.

“The euphoria you’re seeing is mostly related to the fact that the announcement makes the company an acquisition target,” Berens said in a phone interview from Skillman, New Jersey. “An oral drug is what everyone is trying to develop because the current injection treatments are toxic and cumbersome.”

Volumes Surge

BioLineRx’s ADRs rose to $5.55 yesterday after the shares in Tel Aviv climbed 37 percent to 1.65 shekels, or the equivalent of 44 cents. One ADR represents 10 shares. The Tel Aviv shares rose to 2.06 shekels, or 55 cents, today.

Phone messages and e-mails sent to Garth Russell, a spokesman for BioLineRx from an external public-relations company, seeking comments on a potential buyout weren’t returned.

Trading volumes on the stock soared yesterday, with more than 6 million BioLineRx ADRs exchanging hands, compared with an average of 7,000 trades a day, according to Bank of New York Mellon Corp.

The Israeli biopharmaceutical company, whose largest shareholder is Teva (BLRX), listed the ADRs on the Nasdaq Stock Market on July 25.

Israel, whose population of 7.8 million is similar in size to Switzerland’s, has about 60 companies traded on the Nasdaq, the most of any country outside the U.S. after China. The nation is also home to the largest number of startup companies per capita in the world.

Venture Capital

Israeli technology companies raised $2.14 billion in 2011, 70 percent more than in 2010, according to the IVC-KPMG Quarterly Survey e-mailed yesterday.

Check Point, the world’s second-largest maker of network security equipment, climbed 1.2 percent to $56.52 in New York, the highest closing price since Nov. 16.

Shares will probably gain 38 percent to $78 in the next 12 months, Frederick Ziegel, an analyst at Topeka Capital Markets, wrote in an e-mailed report yesterday where he rated the company a “buy” in initial coverage.

EZchip Semiconductor Ltd. (EZCH), a maker of network processors that counts U.S. Internet infrastructure company Juniper Networks Inc. (JNPR) as a customer, gained 3.5 percent to $34.02, swelling the premium versus its Tel Aviv shares to $1.48, the widest among the dually-listed companies. EZchip climbed 5.4 percent to 129.60 shekels, or $34.32, today.

Bottomed Out

The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX), which investors use to track chip industry performance, added 0.4 percent yesterday, extending this year’s gain to 14 percent.

Texas Instruments Inc. (TXN), the world’s largest maker of analog chips, said on Jan. 24 that fourth-quarter sales and profit declined less than analysts had predicted, signaling to brokerage Benchmark Co. that the market for electronic components has bottomed out.

“The chipmakers group seems to be on an upper inflection point,” Gary Mobley, an analyst at Benchmark, said by phone from New York yesterday. “Companies are talking about an end of inventory depletion and see increases in bookings.”

Perrigo Co. (PRGO), the largest U.S. maker of generic over-the- counter drugs, fell 2.1 percent in the U.S. to $97.54 yesterday after its shares in Tel Aviv gained 0.3 percent to 373.50 shekels, or the equivalent of $98.65. The $1.11 discount was the biggest among dually-listed companies. The Tel Aviv shares dropped 0.8 percent to 370.50 shekels, or $98.12, today.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tal Barak Harif in New York at tbarak@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Emma O’Brien at eobrien6@bloomberg.net

There’s a good chance that Iran’s computer systems, the electricity in Indonesian PM’s office and the body armor protecting Saudi soldiers came from Israel.

By Shuki Sadeh

Haaretz, January 19, 2012

Motti (not his real name ), a businessman with connections in Arab countries, was stunned several months ago when representatives of a well-known Israeli food company asked him to check the possibility of exporting to Iran. They told him an Iranian company had approached them through contacts abroad.

Motti refused. He didn’t want to violate the embargo. But since then, he says, he’s discovered that quite a few local companies and businessmen trade indirectly with Israel’s number one enemy. So he wasn’t shocked by a Bloomberg News story three weeks ago about Allot Communications selling Internet surveillance and monitoring equipment to Iran over five years through a Danish distributor.

According to the article, Allot sent the equipment to Denmark where workers removed the labels and repackaged it to hide its Israeli origin. It was then passed along to an intermediary who sold it to Iran. Three former Allot employees told Bloomberg that the equipment’s Iranian destination was an open secret, but the company denied giving its approval or having any knowledge of its products winding up there.

"Trade with Iran is an ancient story," says Prof. Uri Bialer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an expert in international relations who has researched ties between Israel and Iran. "Money has no smell. Iranians always try to do business, and there have always been Israelis with an eye for making money."

Nachum Shiloh, an expert on Iran and owner of GMI – Gulf Markets Intelligence – says that for some Iranian businessmen it makes sense to import from Israel. "Here we view Iran as the enemy, a demon," he explains, "but not every Iranian gets up every morning thinking of ways to destroy Israel. Iran has a large segment of businessmen who are not fanatics, people who want to make money and further their businesses – if they could only trade, even indirectly, with businesspeople and companies from Israel."

The Allot story is also surprising because over the past 30 years – since the Iranian Revolution and severing of ties with Israel – several trade scandals have provoked tremendous fallout, most recently an affair linked to the Ofer family’s businesses.

Sanctions threatened by Israel and the United States are also intended to deter companies from considering ties, even indirectly, with Iran. But in today’s reality, with crisis weighing on western markets, there are companies ogling the third world – with some finding markets in countries hostile to Israel. These countries also have many adoring fans of Israel’s technology and products but, because of political sensitivities, everything must be done on the QT. Stickers and packaging saying "Made in Israel" must be removed and a bill of lading must be produced from an intermediary country – Turkey or somewhere in Europe.

"It’s forbidden to talk about these things," says Dan Catarivas, director of the Foreign Trade and International Relations Division of the Manufacturers Association of Israel. "Israeli industrialists want to stay as far out of the spotlight as possible in this respect. Companies sometimes approach us asking how to obscure their product’s Israeli identity. We refer them to experts in this field – usually shipment, transport and logistics companies."

"Operating surreptitiously is inconvenient and involves hard work and investment, but sometimes there’s no choice," explains a senior official at a well-known Israeli high-tech company. "Our foreign competitors deal freely with Arab countries, so they can lower their prices in Europe – and this is really annoying. It’s worth entering these markets to narrow the gap even slightly."

Israeli business quietly thrives in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and in far-off countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, too. Company owners on both sides do all they can to avoid harmful publicity. Contacts are made at international conferences overseas, through European and U.S. companies familiar with both sides, and directly over the Internet.

"Technology, particularly the Internet, is making the world smaller," explains Eliran Malul at Arab Markets, which brokers deals in Arab countries. "Arab entrepreneurs are interested in Israeli technologies and search them out through the Internet and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn."

Fuzzy rules

Israeli law bans trading with Lebanon, Syria and Iran, directly and indirectly. Some businesspeople complain that rules are too fuzzy, especially when it comes to products showing up in unwanted destinations. "Sometimes Israeli companies don’t know who they’re selling to," says a high-ranking source at the Manufacturers Association. "Let’s say you’re fighting for the business of a new international customer. What can you tell him as you close the deal?: ‘You won’t sell the product to Iran, right?’ Would it help? How would you know if he’s lying?"

Some people believe Israeli companies play dumb regarding the final destination of their products. A high-tech source claims many international technology companies, including Israel-based companies, use local and regional distributors to market their products in broadly defined territories. Iran, for example, is frequently included in the Europe/Middle East/Africa distribution territory, allowing them to turn a blind eye to the product’s final destination.

"Companies need to show growth and meet investors’ expectations, and managers want to continue receiving bonuses," says the Manufacturers Association source, adding that they don’t want to invest resources in investigating where their products end up.

Israel also uses businessmen and trade networks for political and commercial purposes. The state monitors activities of businessmen from Arab countries and enlists the help of Israeli businessmen in carrying out diplomatic missions and serving as intermediaries in clandestine intrigues. After it was revealed that ships belonging to the Ofer Group docked in Iran, foreign publications claimed the Ofer family’s ships had for years assisted Israeli agents in infiltrating Iran. Sources close to the Ofer family hinted in the media at the same time that the Ofer Group claimed it had long played a part in the country’s security.

Apart from this, throughout its existence Israel has used economic transactions for political ends. In the 1950s, for example, Israel secretly sold minerals from the Dead Sea Works to Romania – despite an embargo on communist bloc countries – to persuade Romanian authorities to let Jews there leave for Israel.

Until the rise of Islamic extremists in the late 1970s, Israel secretly bought oil from Iran – part of its tight relations with the Shah’s regime – despite Iran’s official participation in the Arab oil embargo on Israel.

Offices in Indonesia

Relations with Muslim countries extend far beyond the Middle East. In the late 1990s the Foreign Ministry tried establishing trade with Indonesia and Malaysia, Muslim countries with strong economic potential but without diplomatic relations with Israel. It was the heyday of the Oslo Accords and many believed Israel’s economic ties to Muslim and Arab countries would become much more open and productive. Several years earlier Koor Trade had opened an office in Indonesia and began establishing low-profile trading relations there.

"Indonesia and Malaysia were a big story and we dedicated huge efforts to developing economic relations with them," recalls Alon Liel, the Foreign Ministry’s director general at that time. "We reached all sorts of understandings on trade through a nearby embassy. We published a newspaper ad to interest Israeli businesspeople in investing there, but right afterward Indonesia and Malaysia abrogated all the understandings. The trade went underground. For the Foreign Ministry there was no point to it because it had no diplomatic value."

Trade continues covertly with Indonesia at the lowest possible profile and without diplomatic relations. Singapore serves as a base for businessmen trying to penetrate there. In 2007 a subsidiary of Ormat Industries signed a $200-million contract to supply electricity for 30 years. Ormat is part of a consortium on this project, with a Japanese bank providing most of the funding.

An Indonesia-Israel trade bureau was opened two years ago in a bid to make it easier for Israeli businesspeople to enter the country. Currently they can only get in by invitation from a local source sponsoring the visit. If none is available, the Israeli Embassy in Singapore assists by providing a local consultant who can serve as a sponsor in a pinch. Occasionally, however, the authorities turn down requests, depending on the country’s political mood.

Indonesia is one of the world’s fastest growing markets, with great potential in the field of communications because of its vast population – more than 200 million. Clandestine trade is also carried out in the opposite direction, according to Catarivas. Indonesian business delegations visit Israel, too, but this is kept from the general public. Israel imports eight times as much as it exports in its trade with Indonesia.

"This is an economic relationship with tremendous potential," says Emanuel Shahaf, chairman of the Israel-Indonesia Chamber of Commerce. "Businesspeople operating in Indonesia keep their cards close to their chests. Business is good and they don’t want to share it with anyone. The Indonesians also maintain secrecy because of the political sensitivity."

Shahaf says neighboring Malaysia also has great potential but there it’s even more difficult doing business. "They are more radical Muslims. While Indonesians shut their eyes occasionally, a Malaysian company needs a special permit from a government ministry to do business with an Israeli firm."

One of the most interesting countries for duality of relations with Israel, if not the entire Arab world, is Saudi Arabia. On the one hand it has produced some of the world’s most heinous terrorists, most notably Osama bin Laden. On the other hand the country is considered a relatively moderate Arab state – in 2002 it proposed the "Saudi initiative" for peace between Israel and the Arab countries, an initiative disregarded by Israel. Saudi Arabia is at odds with Iran and enjoys excellent diplomatic and economic relations with the United States.

Quite a number of Israeli companies export products to Saudi Arabia, including technological goods. This is sometimes done through their U.S.-registered subsidiaries, thanks to the strong relations between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Israeli companies, such as body armor manufacturer Rabintex Industries, have also provided equipment to U.S. forces stationed in Saudi Arabia. (Rabintex entered receivership last week.)

Another interesting field is trade in plastics. Israel receives raw materials for its plastics industry – polyethylene and polypropylene deriving from petroleum production – from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. These materials are sent in a roundabout way but Israeli authorities are aware of their source. Israel’s plastics industry, in turn, exports greenhouse sheeting, irrigation drippers, house and garden products, disposable utensils and food packaging to Saudi Arabia. Some of these products are made by Turkish factories established by Israeli companies.

According to Liel, who once served as Israel’s ambassador to Turkey, this inflates trade statistics with Turkey. "I assume the high trade figures with Turkey are biased to some degree because they include shipments to countries with which Israel has no relations."

Israeli guards in the Gulf

The wealthy Gulf countries are, without doubt, the most attractive places for Israeli business. As Dubai was building the Palm Islands – a megalomaniac real estate project delayed by the global economic crisis – Israelis had a hand in providing some of the shingles through an Italian roofing tile company.

A fair number of Israeli high-tech companies operate in the Gulf states. One field in which they are active is internal security, a particularly thriving activity before the assassination in Dubai of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh two years ago today. When the story broke there were media claims that photographic and security equipment used by Dubai police resembled Israeli technology. It was never confirmed that Mossad agents (according to foreign reports ) were caught through the use of Israeli technology, but it is known that quite a few companies in the Gulf states rely on sophisticated Israeli technology for security purposes. And not just technology – an Israeli-owned security firm protecting oil fields in one of the Gulf countries also brings in Israelis to guard them.

Israel also exports medical, agricultural and water technologies to the Gulf states. Trade depends on the regional political situation, like with the Mabhouh affair. "In such cases you simply keep your head down and wait until it all blows over," says Naava Mashiah, who lives in Geneva and brokers deals in the Middle East. "You need to be sensitive to the situation. You simply stop, not even sending emails, until the tide turns. Israelis have already gone back to doing business in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar."

Mashiah, who visits the Gulf twice a year, is part of a small group of Israelis who have turned the complicated occupation of business mediation between Israelis and Arabs into a livelihood. Some do it not just for the handsome financial reward but also in the belief that it could bring long-desired peace a step closer. Mashiah belongs to Israeli Peace Initiative, a movement formed by Idan Ofer whose membership, which includes prominent personalities in Israel’s business elite, wants to establish an alternative to the political deadlock in the region.

In dealings in Arab countries it’s impossible to separate the political and business aspects, says Mashiah. "The Saudi initiative didn’t get a response from Israel, and the Arab world sees this as an insult. The Israeli Peace Initiative, in a way, provides an answer to the standstill because it shows there are serious Israelis aware of the political situation and working to change it. Israel is becoming increasingly isolated in the world, and our group is trying to break this isolation. One way is by creating business ties with Arab countries."

A mysterious note slipped to the MK

Of the several scandals involving Israeli-Iranian trade with political and security overtones, the most momentous was the Iran-Contra affair in the 1980s when Israel mediated the U.S. sale of weapons to Iran, transferring the proceeds to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. One of the key figures tied to the affair was Amiram Nir, the first husband of socialite Judy Shalom Nir-Mozes and the prime minister’s adviser on terrorism at that time. He was killed in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico in 1988.

Businessman Nahum Manbar was at the center of another episode. Manbar, who traded with Iran for several years before being caught, was convicted in 1998 for selling it chemical weapons. Several months ago he was released from prison.

The most recent flap, dubbed Ofergate, broke out last May when the U.S. State Department disclosed that the Ofer Group had sold an oil tanker to Iran’s national shipping company in violation of international trade sanctions. The ship was reportedly sold by Tanker Pacific, an Ofer Holdings Group subsidiary, for about $8.5 million through a third party. The State Department consequently blacklisted the Ofer Group, impeding its U.S. business activities and ability to obtain credit from U.S. banks. It was revealed by TheMarker that Tanker Pacific ships had docked in Iranian ports on a number of occasions over the last decade.

A debate on the affair by the Knesset Economic Affairs Committee was abruptly cut short when a mysterious note was slipped to committee chairman Carmel Shama-Hacohen. The contents of the note have never been revealed. Several months later the U.S. announced it was removing the Ofer Group from the blacklist following discussions with group representatives. Tanker Pacific, however, was left on the list. Following that scandal the Finance Ministry is setting up an operations center to coordinate international economic sanctions.

This story is by: Shuki Sadeh, Haaretz